All you ever see is "X Team restructures contract to get cap space in the upcoming season".

Is it possible / why don't teams ever take the remaining cap space they have (leave some left over for emergency signings) and restructure it to the upcoming season. The player gets more $ right now, the team saves cap $ in future years... Seems like a win / win?

Why do the Steelers need close to 7 mill of cap space? Why not sign Ben's contract and structure it so a lot of the cap hit goes this year?

Troy Loney wrote:The Wallace situation is kind of hard to assess. He was the perfect piece in the Arians/Roethlisberger offense, I guess it's a bit of a chicken and the egg thing, would Wallace have been such a POS malcontent if they had given him a contract earlier and not gone through that whole BS with giving the wallace contract to brown and that mess. Then there's the debacle that was the Haley/Wallace holdout season.

They'd be a better team with Wallace, and the Sanders thing was baffling too, matching the RFA tender just to let him walk the next year? If he wasn't worth that much, why not take the draft pick?

I think all these confusing/mess situations are a product of prior years cap mismanagement. And get ready for some really bad kicking of the can down the street cap moves when they inevitably extend Big Ben.

They made Wallace a contract offer for pretty big money. He turned it down because he wanted Fitzgerald money, so the Steelers walked away and signed Brown instead. I think that worked out.

As for Sanders, the Steelers needed a receiver for 2014. They'll get a compensatory pick for him for 2015. They essentially bought themselves another year to evaluate him and decided he wasn't worth keeping around, a sentiment most agree with.

They're pretty much past all of their cap problems at this point. The cap's going to keep going up and they don't have too many horrible contracts. Part of why they haven't redone Big Ben's contract is because they don't need the space. They've rebuilt things on the fly without bottoming out, yet no one wants to acknowledge it's a rebuild because they didn't bottom out.

All you ever see is "X Team restructures contract to get cap space in the upcoming season".

Is it possible / why don't teams ever take the remaining cap space they have (leave some left over for emergency signings) and restructure it to the upcoming season. The player gets more $ right now, the team saves cap $ in future years... Seems like a win / win?

Why do the Steelers need close to 7 mill of cap space? Why not sign Ben's contract and structure it so a lot of the cap hit goes this year?

The Andy Reid Eagles did similar things like that, IIRC. The main reason is you want to have cap space in case injuries hit and you need to sign a right tackle because your starting right tackle tore his Achilles, for example.

Rocco wrote:They made Wallace a contract offer for pretty big money. He turned it down because he wanted Fitzgerald money, so the Steelers walked away and signed Brown instead. I think that worked out.

As for Sanders, the Steelers needed a receiver for 2014. They'll get a compensatory pick for him for 2015. They essentially bought themselves another year to evaluate him and decided he wasn't worth keeping around, a sentiment most agree with.

They're pretty much past all of their cap problems at this point. The cap's going to keep going up and they don't have too many horrible contracts. Part of why they haven't redone Big Ben's contract is because they don't need the space. They've rebuilt things on the fly without bottoming out, yet no one wants to acknowledge it's a rebuild because they didn't bottom out.

They're revamped the linebacker core, which is huge for this team, but at the same time the Defensive Line is in bad shape. Heyward looks like a long term piece and McClendon is passable, I'm not sure about this Cam Thomas guy, but he seems like a stop gap. Pruitt could solidify an end spot, but the lack of a NT is going to hurt the run defense.

They seem to think they're over all the problems on the offensive line, and the interior line looks good, but Gilbert, Beachum and Adams at tackle does not give me confidence.

They need probably 2 quality corners, a receiver to complement Brown and a NT. They will likely have to give a long contract to Worldis soon, and then next off season extend roethlisberger. Those moves might allow for some cap room in 2015 and 2016, but those will both put cap restrictions in place in the following years...so basically, as soon as they get out of cap hell, they'll have to put themselves back in it.

Rocco wrote:They made Wallace a contract offer for pretty big money. He turned it down because he wanted Fitzgerald money, so the Steelers walked away and signed Brown instead. I think that worked out.

As for Sanders, the Steelers needed a receiver for 2014. They'll get a compensatory pick for him for 2015. They essentially bought themselves another year to evaluate him and decided he wasn't worth keeping around, a sentiment most agree with.

They're pretty much past all of their cap problems at this point. The cap's going to keep going up and they don't have too many horrible contracts. Part of why they haven't redone Big Ben's contract is because they don't need the space. They've rebuilt things on the fly without bottoming out, yet no one wants to acknowledge it's a rebuild because they didn't bottom out.

They're revamped the linebacker core, which is huge for this team, but at the same time the Defensive Line is in bad shape. Heyward looks like a long term piece and McClendon is passable, I'm not sure about this Cam Thomas guy, but he seems like a stop gap. Pruitt could solidify an end spot, but the lack of a NT is going to hurt the run defense.

They seem to think they're over all the problems on the offensive line, and the interior line looks good, but Gilbert, Beachum and Adams at tackle does not give me confidence.

They need probably 2 quality corners, a receiver to complement Brown and a NT. They will likely have to give a long contract to Worldis soon, and then next off season extend roethlisberger. Those moves might allow for some cap room in 2015 and 2016, but those will both put cap restrictions in place in the following years...so basically, as soon as they get out of cap hell, they'll have to put themselves back in it.

"The Steelers, too, have drawn a weak schedule this season. We have them with the third-easiest projected opponent slate, mostly thanks to games against the AFC South and in-division games against an AFC North that might be surprisingly mediocre. Another factor that weighs heavily is the improvement of their offensive line. The Steelers allowed 35 sacks in the first 10 weeks of the season but just seven in the last seven weeks. A healthy Maurkice Pouncey will only help things there. Finally, the Pittsburgh defense is also projected to rebound. Pittsburgh's 19th-place finish in defensive DVOA is its lowest since we started keeping track of the stat. (DVOA is Football Outsiders' defense-adjusted value over average metric, explained here.) The Steelers should be able to cobble things together a little more than they did in 2013, and that could boost them into the playoffs."